Before The Storm
by PWTMC
Summary: It's a slow day in the hospital before a familiar face rolls in. Sakura-centric. Oneshot.


A/N: It's been a while since I've written a oneshot and I honestly miss it. The whole concept of no strings is awesome. I love my multi-chaps and everything, it's just that I don't love the pressure to update that comes along with them. So, upon having that little epiphany of mine, I decided to pull a plot out of my ass – like literally, anything. This is what I got.

I'm actually quite proud of this one.

OOO

The hospital, if you could even call it that, was relatively empty today. Sakura found herself stationed at one of the most crowded treatment centers in one of the most hot combat zones in the entire war and today nobody was coming in.

Other medics were praying this was a sign of the war slowing down. Sakura didn't think so. This was blind luck. Come lunch, people would be rushed in missing limbs, bleeding internally, and disfigured for life. There was only so much she could do for ninjas brought into such a facility.

It was nothing like the world-renowned hospitals Konoha boasted at home. This was three small buildings, commandeered in the midst of a past skirmish. They weren't exactly sterile and there was never enough space. This one was the closest to the battlefield, though. People had to make due.

The clock struck ten and Sakura was beginning to think maybe she would head to their makeshift lobby for a cup of coffee. It was horrible coffee in every aspect of the word, but it got her through multiple surgeries. She often did them back to back to back. Shifts were long and brutal. And while she would kill to be out on the battlefield, she knew she was needed here, running these insane shifts. If she went out with Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi she would only be responsible for exactly that – the three of them.

Here she saves more than three lives a day. Sometimes three an hour.

"Sakura."

The twenty-four year old looked up from the spot of blood she'd been staring at – a mark from a man she'd never forget, three years younger than her and left brain dead – and straight up at her mentor. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Why don't you head back to your room and get some sleep?"

Tsunade looked a bit tired herself. Running these tiny hospitals was big business. Sakura knew that Tsunade refused to go sleep for the exact same reason she did. There was no way in hell the building would stay quiet for much longer. The fact that nobody had been rushed in yet was more of a bad omen than anything else.

She just shrugged back, mumbling under her breath something along the lines of, "I'm not tired".

Tsunade crossed her arms just under her chest, propping her breasts up in a way that made the male medics strain their necks to see from across the room. Tsunade was major morale around these parts. She must have known so, too.

"I think you are. Your shift is up in two hours. Knock off early."

"No thank you."

The next time Tsunade said it, it wouldn't be an offer. It would be an order. Sakura's saving grace came in the form of what she dreaded most - the bang of the double doors to the trauma bay being slammed open, the squeaking wheels of a couple gurneys being pushed across the floor and the sound of screaming all followed by the undeniable scent of blood.

One of the medics who brought them in turned to Sakura, giving her the full story in hasty tones, "We fell into a trap. It took three of our men down. Last bed is all internal and his BP is terrifying. He's bleeding and will need to be sent to the OR as soon as possible. Then we've got a hand injury, it looks really bad. You might have to cut the whole thing off. The hand injury also comes with some blunt force trauma, but I ran a diagnostic on the way over and he's stable. Our third is just bumps and bruises. He's more worried than anything. Tend to him last."

Sakura took it all in, used to the fast paced conversation and the crappy tricks used to develop a shaky diagnosis at best. She always ran her own. Looking down the hall she could see that Tsunade was already tending to their internal bleeding case. Sakura passed the frightened, but near unscathed, shinobi for the other injury.

And she stopped dead in her tracks.

Laying in the gurney before her was none other than Kakashi, soot from the explosion on his face, hair a mess, headband missing. Tears ran down his maskless face and he was bloodied all over from the multitude of cuts and scrapes the debris left on him. Those were minor injuries, however.

Kakashi was the hand injury.

Kakashi might be sent home during the middle of a war he was damn near leading with a completely immobile, if even there at all, hand. Kakashi might not be the man of one thousand jutsu anymore.

He didn't look good. She called to the nurse for a blood transfusion first. Kakashi was beyond pale and the gauze he was wrapped in was beginning to ooze blood. Definitely not a good sign.

Sakura approached him, placing one delicate hand on his dirty forehead. She watched mismatched eyes roll toward her and he made an immediate, shameless request, "Oh God, please don't take my hand, Sakura."

She looked down, knowing she couldn't make a promise like that. In these situations it was often amputate immediately to save a life. But she knew Kakashi and she knew he wouldn't be able to live if he wasn't in this war. He wouldn't be the same Kakashi. He'd only have something else to hate himself for, something else to regret.

Right now, he was too upset to wonder what mistake he made.

Both hands were secured in place, strapped down against the table. He couldn't see the hand himself, but he probably couldn't feel it and he must have gotten a good glance before his transport to the hospital arrived. He knew what he was in for.

"I'll try my best, Kakashi." Sakura replied, leaving out the sensei deliberately. When men came in here they needed doctors, not students. Kakashi needed comfort. Maybe what Kakashi really needed was some anesthesia.

"Please." Kakashi repeated, voice cracking, breaking Sakura's heart, "Please, Sakura."

It was hard to see him like this.

The screaming in the room had began to die down as Tsunade took her patient to the OR and other medics tended to the perfectly fine shinobi that came in along with his squad. Now that man just made Sakura angry, but she almost wished he was frantic still, anything to drown out Kakashi's sorrow and the fact that she knew she couldn't fix that hand.

She remembered the initial report she got from the medic that brought him in, something along the lines of 'you might have to cut the whole thing off'. He couldn't have warned her that this was Kakashi with the injury? He couldn't have warned her that this was her sensei, broken and devastated, probably taken out of commission completely?

She couldn't imagine never being able to spar with him or never being able to learn from him again. Suddenly, she wished she hadn't decided on being stationary in this stupid hospital. If she went out on the battlefield Team 7 wouldn't have been split up and Kakashi would still have a functioning hand.

"I'm going to try my best." Sakura repeated, unfastening the binds around the injured wrist. Bloodied extremity in her own perfectly fine hand, Sakura reached over the gurney to grab a pair of scissors. She had the gauze cut off before the nurses even had a chance to run an IV into him.

There was no way the hand could be saved, at least not in any way that would leave it functioning. She could mend the pieces of bone and stitch his flesh back together, but there was no way he was moving it again. She couldn't even tell where the tendon began and the muscle ended without feeling it. Everything was a mess.

By the look on his face, Sakura could tell that Kakashi knew the same thing.

"Oh my God" The copy ninja whispered, his healthy hand shaking in it's bind, "Oh, no."

"Don't assume there's nothing I can do just yet."

Lies.

"It's really bad, Sakura." Kakashi said, waver to his voice.

"Doesn't matter." Sakura said, sounding stronger than she felt. There was one room in the OR left and she planned on trying before she gave up. "I'll fix it."

They both knew an empty promise when they heard one, though.

OOO

A/N: And there we have it. I realize I could have bent the rules a bit more, but I don't quite like Kishimoto's idea of, "Durrr, medical ninjas can do EVERYTHING!" It's almost like an insult to medicine. So I chose to be depressing.

And once I finished up, I realized something – Haku could perform handsigns with one single hand. It's not over for Kakashi! But this fic is over still :p


End file.
